What is Clay?
Clay is a data enrichment and go-to-market automation platform, covering how a company finds and reaches potential customers. You work in spreadsheet-like tables with columns that fetch emails, phone numbers, company data and information gathered from the web by the Claygent AI agent.
Unlike contact databases such as Apollo, which rely on their own records, Clay connects to more than 150 data providers and queries them in sequence through waterfall enrichment: if the first provider can't find the information, it moves on to the next, increasing coverage. This flexibility has made it a reference for technically minded sales teams; according to the New York Times, the company allowed employees to sell shares at a $5 billion valuation.
Main Features
- Enrichment tables: every column can call a data provider, an AI model or an integration
- Waterfall enrichment: several providers queried in sequence to find emails, phone numbers and company data
- Claygent: an AI agent that visits websites and extracts custom information
- AI columns: write personalized copy, score leads and summarize the data collected
- Signals: tracking of job changes, promotions, new hires and company news
- Integrations and email: sync with CRMs and outreach tools, plus a built-in email sequencer
How Does Clay Work?
You create a table by importing a list from a CSV file, a CRM or Clay's own company and people search, called Audiences. Then you add columns: one finds the email address through the provider waterfall, another asks Claygent to read the company's website and answer a specific question, another uses a language model to write a tailored email opener.
Tables can run automatically and push results to the CRM or to an email sequence. Usage is measured in actions, the operations performed on the platform, and in data credits, spent when buying data from providers; if you bring your own API keys, you only pay for actions.
Who is Clay for?
- Sales teams doing outbound prospecting
- B2B marketers building targeted lists and campaigns
- Sales ops and GTM engineers
- Lead generation agencies
- Startups that want quality data without manual research
Use Cases
- Finding emails and phone numbers for a list of contacts
- Qualifying leads by size, industry and technologies used
- Personalizing first-touch emails with details taken from the web
- Catching job changes to reach out at the right moment
- Enriching and updating CRM records
Pricing
Clay has a Free plan with 500 actions and 100 data credits per month, unlimited seats, tables of up to 200 rows and Claygent included, but no phone number enrichment. Launch starts at $185 per month ($167 billed annually) and adds phone numbers, Audiences, signals and the email sequencer; Growth starts at $495 per month ($446 annually), while Enterprise has custom pricing with an annual contract. A 14-day trial is available.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- More than 150 data providers in a single platform
- Claygent automates slow manual research
- Great freedom in building workflows
Cons:
- Steep learning curve for anyone not comfortable with data and automation
- Paid plans are a big commitment for freelancers and small businesses
- Action and credit consumption is not always easy to predict
Final Verdict
Clay is one of the most complete tools for enriching data and automating B2B prospecting: it brings together more than 150 sources, an AI agent for web research and integrations with CRMs and outreach tools. It works best for teams willing to build custom workflows; the free plan lets you see whether it fits your needs before moving up to Launch.